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Putin critic tells of poisoning attempt

A Russian opposition leader sharply critical of President Vladimir Putin has told US lawmakers that he narrowly escaped death last month after being poisoned with a substance his doctors still haven't been able to identify.

In congressional testimony on Wednesday, Vladimir Kara-Murza said his survival shows there are "near misses" in the Russian government's campaign to silence its political opponents.

He told lawmakers the official diagnosis was "toxic action by an undefined substance".

Kara-Murza said he suffered multiple organ failure and was placed in a medically induced coma for several days after being hospitalised on February 2. The episode was reminiscent of a mysterious poisoning he suffered two years earlier when he nearly died from kidney failure.

Kara-Murza's appearance before the Senate Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee is part of a broader inquiry into what the panel's chairman, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, has called Russia's "misadventures throughout the world." Graham is one of a few congressional Republicans to openly criticise President Donald Trump's push for closer ties with Russia after US intelligence agencies concluded Moscow interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

The purpose of the hearing was to make a case for creating a "counter-Russia" account in the US government's budget, according to Graham. The money would be used to finance and empower countries and organisations "that are fighting back against Putin's regime," he said.

"It's in American taxpayers' interests that we push back against Putin's efforts to dismantle democracy throughout the world," Graham added.

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Trump triggered a bipartisan backlash in early February when he repeated his desire to improve relations with Putin during an interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. O'Reilly called Putin "a killer." Trump answered, "We've got a lot of killers. What do you think? Our country's so innocent?"

Kara-Murza is the vice chairman of Open Russia, a private foundation run by exiled Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Just a few weeks before his most recent illness, Kara-Murza sent a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that was sharply critical of Putin's government. The letter, dated January 9, came just before Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's confirmation hearing. Kara-Murza urged the committee to take his assessment into account when considering Tillerson's nomination and the "next steps in US-Russia relations."